Cornelius a Lapide
This is the holy Gospel History of the sayings and deeds of Jesus as written down by Luke. The Arabic version: "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, the one God, the Gospel of the Father most excellent, by Luke the Evangelist. The opening of the glorious Gospel." The Syriac version: "In the name of our Lord and God Jeschua Meschicho (Jesus Messiah), we seal the holy Gospel, the message of Luke the Evangelist, which he spoke and announced in Ionic (that is, in Greek) in Alexandria the Great."
From this diversity it is clear that this title, or this inscription, was prefixed to this Gospel not by Luke, but by the Church — which in the same way inscribed one Gospel "according to Matthew," another "according to John," another "according to Mark." Indeed, with respect to faith it would have been uselessly added by Luke himself, had not the Church declared and handed down that it is genuinely his and not a forgery. Note this as an argument for tradition against heretics. For why should the Gospel inscribed under Luke's name be held to be truly his, while the Gospels inscribed under Matthias and Thomas are not held to belong to Matthias and Thomas themselves? And again, why should the Gospel of Luke be canonical rather than the Gospel of Apelles or Basilides? No other reason can be given than the Church's approval, declaration, and tradition. For we believe this, not because it is written in the sacred letters, but because it has been so handed down by the Church. For example, we believe this to be the Gospel of Luke and to be canonical, not because Luke himself wrote it, but because the Church so hands down and teaches. Granted that this Gospel, like the others, has its own inherent authority, nevertheless that authority is not evident to us except through the declaration of the Church.
The same must be said by parallel reasoning of the meaning of Scripture. For the genuine meaning of Scripture is not that which seems such to me or to you (for then it would be uncertain and doubtful, since Calvin offers one sense, Luther another, others still another), but that which the Church teaches and hands down. For just as it is the Church's role to hand down what is true Sacred Scripture, so too it is her role to hand down what its genuine meaning is. For Sacred Scripture does not consist in the outer bark of letters or words, but in their genuine meaning. So Trent, session IV, and the Fathers throughout, and by name Tertullian, Book IV Against Marcion, chapter 5. See the remarks on Matthew 1:1.
Note first: Matthew first wrote the Gospel in Hebrew for the Hebrews in Judea; second, Mark wrote it in Italy for the Romans in Greek and Latin; third, Luke wrote for the Greeks in Greece in Greek; fourth, John wrote in Greek — but Luke more elegantly, since he was especially skilled in Greek. Hear St. Jerome, Epistle 103 to Paulinus: "Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John — the Lord's four-horse chariot and the true Cherubim, which is interpreted 'multitude of knowledge' — are eyed over their whole body, sparks flash forth, lightnings dart about, their feet are straight and reaching upward, their backs are feathered and everywhere flying about. They hold to one another and are intertwined, and roll as though wheel within wheel, and go wherever the breath of the Holy Spirit shall carry them."
Moreover, among the four faces or likenesses of the Cherubim, the third — that of the ox — is assigned to Luke: first, because he himself begins with the priesthood of Zachariah, whose chief sacrificial victim was the ox; second, because he himself took up the labors of the ox in the Gospel, and continually bore the mortification of the cross in his body for the honor of Christ's name, as the Church sings of him. See the remarks on Apocalypse IV:7 and Ezekiel I:10.
Note second: Luke wrote his Gospel against certain drowsy, unskilled, and perhaps even false Evangelists, who in Syria or Greece had put together the Gospel imperfectly, and perhaps even mendaciously — as Luke himself hints at the beginning of his Prologue. So Origen, St. Ambrose, Theophylact on this passage, and St. Epiphanius, Heresies 31 — though when the latter adds that Luke wrote against Cerinthus and Merinthus, he does not seem to say anything true; for these two, as well as Basilides, were later and younger than Luke, as is sufficiently gathered from Eusebius, Book III of the History, chapter 32. More probably Theophylact and Bede judge that Luke wrote his Gospel against the apocryphal Gospels of others, such as those which circulated under the names of Thomas, Matthias, and the Twelve Apostles.
Note third: Luke was not one of the seventy-two disciples of Christ, as Euthymius and St. Gregory, in the preface to Job chapter 1, opine on the authority of Origen. For Luke did not see Christ in the flesh, but wrote down what he had heard from Paul and the Apostles concerning Christ, as he himself says in chapter 1, verse 2. Hence the Fathers everywhere call Luke a disciple of the Apostles; and in particular Luke was the constant companion of Paul. So St. Jerome, on Isaiah 65, and in the preface to Matthew, where he says: "The third Evangelist, Luke the physician, a Syrian by nation, of Antioch, whose praise is in the Gospel, who is himself a disciple of the apostle Paul, composed his volume in the regions of Achaia and Bœotia, repeating certain things more deeply, and, as he himself confesses in the Prologue, describing what he heard more than what he saw." The same is handed down by Irenaeus, Book I, [chapter] 20, and Theodoret, in the preface to the Lives of the Holy Fathers; Baronius and others.
Indeed, Tertullian, Book IV Against Marcion, chapter 5, judges this Gospel to belong not so much to Luke as to Paul, since Luke wrote it down from Paul's own mouth, just as Mark did from the mouth of Peter. For so he says: "It is granted that what Mark published is affirmed to be Peter's, whose interpreter Mark was. For they are also accustomed to ascribe Luke's Digest (that is, his Gospel) to Paul: what the disciples published began to appear as that of the masters."
Furthermore, St. Jerome teaches that Luke in his Gospel and the Acts acts as a physician of souls, just as he had previously acted as a physician of bodies. For so he says, Epistle 103 to Paulinus: "If we have recognized that their author is Luke the physician, whose praise is in the Gospel, we shall likewise notice that all his words are medicine to an ailing soul." The same, in the Epistle to Philemon [i.e. to Philo]: "Luke the physician, leaving behind the Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles for the Churches, has — just as the Apostles from being fishers of fish were made fishers of men — so from being a physician of bodies been turned into a physician of souls. And as often as his book is read in the churches, so often does his medicine not cease."
Note fourth: Baronius judges that Luke wrote in Paul's company in the year of Christ 58, on the grounds that St. Jerome says Luke wrote in Achaia and Bœotia, where Paul was in that year. Yet others reckon the Gospel to have been written by Luke earlier — and this must absolutely be said if we agree with St. Jerome, On Ecclesiastical Writers, under Luke; with Tertullian, Book IV Against Marcion, chapter 5; with Primasius, Anselm, and others on 2 Corinthians 8:18, who take Paul there, by the phrase "the brother whose praise is in the Gospel," to mean Luke — which St. Ignatius also expressly asserts (St. Luke's contemporary and practically fellow-townsman), who writes to the Ephesians thus: "As Luke bears witness, whose praise is in the Gospel." For the second Epistle to the Corinthians was written by Paul in the year of Christ 58; hence, if at that time Luke's praise was already in his Gospel, it must necessarily be said that it had already been published before then.
Therefore Euthymius and Theophylact, in their Prologue on Luke, say that Luke wrote fifteen years after the Ascension of Christ — that is, in the year of Christ 49. But at that time Luke had not yet attached himself to Paul; for he joined him at Troas, in the year of Christ 54, as Baronius rightly gathers from Acts of the Apostles, chapter 16, verse 10. Therefore it seems that Luke wrote the Gospel after the year of Christ 51, but several years before the year of Christ 58 — for by that year it was already published and well known, as Paul says.
Note fifth: Luke, after he had attached himself to St. Paul, was away from him for several years, having been sent elsewhere (as I showed on Acts 16:10), until Paul, having journeyed through various regions, returned to Greece, about to sail to Syria and from there to Rome (Acts 20:3); for at that time Paul took Luke along, among the other companions of this journey who are named in that verse — as Luke himself indicates there, verses 5 and 15. From that point, then, Luke was the constant companion of St. Paul, up to the first chains which Paul underwent at Rome in the second year of Nero — which is why Luke ends the Acts of the Apostles, and in particular of Paul, at that point.
Thence, according to St. Epiphanius, Luke, leaving Paul while he was still in chains, set out for Dalmatia, Gaul, Italy, and Macedonia, and everywhere preached the Gospel; and at last at Patara, a city of Achaia, at the age of 84, crowned with a glorious martyrdom, he went up into the heavens, in the year of Christ 61, in the fifth year of Nero, and in the seventeenth year of St. Peter's sitting at Rome — as Baronius teaches, citing St. Gregory Nazianzen, Paulinus, Gaudentius, Glycas, Nicephorus, and others, under the year of Christ just mentioned.
Finally, who Luke was, of what sort, and how great a man he was, I have set forth at length in the Prologue to the Acts of the Apostles, in their Argument, where I said that Luke seems to be the same as the Lucius whom Paul calls his kinsman in Romans 16:21. The same Luke, however, seems to be distinct from Lucius of Cyrene, mentioned in Acts 13 — for Luke was a native of Antioch, not of Cyrene. Again, the Roman Martyrology under April 22 says that this Lucius was one of the first disciples of Christ, which does not apply to Luke.
Note sixth: The reason why Luke wrote his Gospel after Matthew and Mark was twofold. The first: that he might refute the pseudo-evangelists already springing up in Syria and Greece, as I said in note 2. The second: that he himself intended to follow up and write down the sayings and deeds of Christ omitted by the other Evangelists — and especially His infancy and childhood, and the annunciation, conception, and nativity of His precursor John the Baptist, the manger, the swaddling clothes, the shepherds, the circumcision, the presentation in the temple, the finding among the doctors; the conversions of St. Magdalene, of Zacchaeus, and of one of the two thieves on the cross; the appearance of Christ made to the two disciples at Emmaus; the parables of the Pharisee and the Publican, of the Samaritan, of the lost sheep, of the lost drachma, of the prodigal son, of Lazarus, of the rich banqueter, and of the pounds (minas) — all of which commend Christ's mercy and love toward sinners and the wretched.
See St. Irenaeus, Book III, chapter 14, reviewing these items one by one. In addition, Luke narrates the passion, resurrection, and ascension of Christ more fully than the others.
Finally, Blessed Peter Damian, in his sermon On St. Matthew, says: "Luke," he says, "keeps his own mode and order, while he describes the priestly lineage and person of the Lord, and thus throughout the whole course of his style he persists in this intention — that he may not omit the various matters concerning the temple and the priests down to the end of the Gospel, etc. For the Mediator of God and men, according to His human nature, willed to be one and the same King and Priest, that He might govern by the strength of the royal crown and make expiation by the office of a priest. These two persons have been specially commended by the Fathers as figures of Christ; to Him chiefly, and by singular prerogative, God gave the throne of His father David, that of His Kingdom there should be no end, and that He should be a Priest according to the order of Melchisedech."
Again, St. Anselm, on chapter 4 of Colossians, gives two reasons why Luke speaks more than the others about Christ's mercy. The first is: "Luke," he says, "was first a physician of bodies; then, being converted to Christ, he was made a physician of souls. Hence it comes about that he speaks more than the other Evangelists of the mercies of the Redeemer, through which the languors of sins are driven from souls." The second reason he declares in these words: "He also describes in Christ the person of a priest, interceding for the sins of the whole world."
Lastly, our Johannes de la Haye, in his Apparatus Evangelicus, chapter 68, enumerates the twenty-five privileges granted to St. Luke, where among other things he reports — on the authority of St. Jerome, Bede, and Ado — that St. Luke never committed a mortal sin and yet led an austere life in continual mortification; likewise that St. Luke preserved his virginity forever, and was on that account more dear to the Blessed Virgin than the others.
Commentaries on Luke in particular were written by St. Ambrose and Titus of Bostra. Tertullian also, throughout his book Against Marcion — who kept claiming that the Gospel of Luke, though in a corrupted form, was his own — treats and explains many passages from it. Cardinal Toletus also wrote at length and with precision on the first twelve chapters of Luke.